There’s plenty of reasons to be excited to see a movie. One I’ve grown to keep an eye out for is the slipped-in gigantic director-as-producer credit. Revelations would still have been something that intrigued me: a new thriller from the guy who made the best zombie movie in years. But on top of that, one of the producers is one of the great directors of all time, Alfonso Cuaron. That’s a bar setting stamp of approval that should give you hope that this latest South Korean product is more than just a streaming dump.
The creepy opening sets the stakes. Tween Shin A-young (Kim Bo-min) is walking alone on a rainy day. She’s followed by a very strange, ominous man (Shin Min-jae) that’ll send shivers down a parent’s spine. Shin, smartly, ducks into a church service, run by pastor Sung Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol) who clocks the disheveled newcomer and hopes to recruit him. And, as we zoom out, detective Lee Yeon-hee (Shin Hyun-been) is watching all of this go on, but half like a cop and half like a rage filled revenge seeker.
Writer/director Yeon Sang-ho finds something striking and true about the human condition that rarely goes explored in movie form (unless Fincher is involved). His primary thesis: all humans have their own personal worldview, and will do their best to contort what happens to them to fit those beliefs. Religious beliefs are the backbone of the story and a clear focus point of his thesis. But his approach is smartly more broad in scope: our detective Lee has developed a more ubiquitous philosophy of her own, and our weirdo stranger has triggers for his dark thoughts. Each person’s doctrine could be motivated by good or evil, and interestingly, could result in either good or evil. The movie goes full Psycho in overexplaining this to the streaming audience, but when it’s cooking, Sang-ho’s story uses incredible visual storytelling to drive home these points, and as importantly, show us how to not be subsumed by those contortions and rise above them.
Thankfully, these themes rise out of the really juicy story Yeon Sang-ho has set up here. There’s purposely a lot of random, coincidentally interwoven lives into a true crime ready plot for everyone to fall into. There are times you can feel the movie trimmed down from a bigger adaptation, as some characters you think would be a big deal get dispatched in a non murdery way from the plot and are never heard from again. But the main triad of our strange man, paster Sung, and detective Lee are interesting and worthy enough to follow around, going down random plot and moral rabbit holes to solve the movie’s complex mystery. The twists and turns don’t always work, but most hit more than they miss, and director Yeon Sang-ho never lets the movie get too far away from him, with entertainment as his north star.
It finally happened! I had spent years doing Korean and Mexican director battles because of the sheer amount of talent from both those countries. We got our first collab here. Now let’s do more, but the opposite. You’re telling me you wouldn’t watch a Bong Joon Ho produced Guillermo Del Toro movie. Or even better: Park Chan Wook producing an Alfonso Cuaron movie. Give that film all the awards, and maybe a shot at the best movie ever made!